There’s something really troubling to me about the way Moffat wrote Mary and Eurus, and I can’t quite articulate what it is. Why does it bother me so much that Mary shot someone in the chest and this gets excused as “surgery” and Eurus can literally murder children and she gets a hug and dueling violins with big brother???
I need to understand what is going on in Moffat’s head so I can pin point the exact brand of misogyny that created this trope that appears repeatedly in his work.
I’ve actually been thinking about this because of S4 gif sets that somehow ended up on my dash this afternoon…
I honestly think that Moffat thinks that abusive = strong. Also, that a woman who is dom in unhealthy ways is sexy. Moffat’s ultimate wank fantasy was his Irene Adler who was literally a dominatrix who drugged the protag against his will, broke into his flat twice, once to return his coat and kiss him while he was drugged, and a second time to sleep in his bed and wear his clothes without his permission, but the audience were meant to read that those actions as evidence of cleverness, strength, and love for Sherlock (and yes, I’ve heard all the arguments against that reading, but given Moffat’s track record writing women, I do really think that was writer intent).
This extends to Mary, who constantly belittles both John and Sherlock, low key turns them against one another while trying to build up her own individual alliances, shoots Sherlock when he offers to help her, threatens him while he’s still barely conscious in the hospital, threatens to kill him again in the empty house, compares her husband to a dog, calls Sherlock a pig, drugs Sherlock when he offers to help her, denies her husband any say in naming their child and then gives their baby the name she was known by when she was up to no good, essentially painting a target on her baby’s back, runs out on her husband and baby rather than stay and accept help from two men who are pretty qualified to offer it. She does all this and it’s meant to be ‘cute’, the strong, sassy assassin, who is Sherlock’s pal, and John’s angel wife who makes him and Sherlock want to be better men (even though John openly admitted that he barely liked her when they finally caught up with her in TST, so inconsistent much?!).
You see this in milder ways with Sarah Sawyer in TGG and Mrs. Hudson in TFP. The women offering to do something nice and then withholding which is meant to be ‘cute’, or somehow demonstrates they are a strong woman with boundaries. So you have Sarah asking John if he’d like breakfast, and when he says yes, telling him he’ll have to get it himself, or Mrs. Hudson in TFP offering a clearly shaken Mycroft tea, and when he says he would like some, she says ‘teapot’s over there’. That’s cute to Moffat. To me it just reads as rude. Mrs. Hudson’s ‘Not your Housekeeper’ in ASiP was more what I would consider healthy boundary setting. And both actresses sort of managed to salvage it from coming off as really awful with their delivery, but yeah–not really ‘cute’.
Eurus was a bit of a different thing. A wild, feral, damaged creature who needed to be tamed by the love, forgiveness and acceptance of the male protag. She was the mad girl in the attic. She murdered Sherlock’s childhood best friend, tortured Sherlock as a child, drove a wedge in the family dynamic, burnt the family home down, put Sherlock through years of torment as an adult, as it seems she was behind some of Moriarty’s machinations (and was apparently a murderous rapist to boot). But in her case it was because she was just born bad. She deserves pity because she was born too intelligent for her own good, so smart she was wholly without empathy, and totally mad (don’t even get me started on the ableism here, that’s a post for another day). And she existed only to be the catalyst to Sherlock’s emotional growth. He must forgive her, and love her back to life.
I mean all of these are pretty common misogynistic traits. Moffat’s writing is essentially a misogyny grab-bag. Pick your misogynistic trope. If it exists, you’ll probably find it somewhere in his writing history.
I think what bothers me, specifically, is that this aspect of Mary and eurus in particular makes them feel like props rather than people.
I’d be hard pressed to find a male character who could kill as many people as eurus did and come out the other side as simply misunderstood – but with the ladies of Sherlock moffat is just interested in getting from point A to point D. Need to have Sherlock dying in an ambulance in his mind palace for dramatic effect? Have Mary shoot him! But she’s still good ol’ Mary in the end, of course, because women don’t have internal lives and therefore don’t get character arcs.
The idea of this being a wank fantasy of moffat’s seems pretty on the money tho.
The writers modelled the inner lives of their female characters after male behaviour patterns. It seems they thought: “Well, a real man would say ‘I take my wife home’, therefore a feminist woman will say ‘I take my husband home’ (like Marydid in TAB).” But exchanging the gender of the character uttering those lines doesn’t turn male oppressive patriarchal machismo into feminist self-assertion. That is a mistake many male writers make: They think, in short that, a strong woman will act like an alpha male. Except we don’t.
For example, a truly self-confident feminist character in the TAB graveyard scene could have said. “I don’t want to watch Sherlock do these things I find strange and disturbing. I decide to go home. No one has to take me. But he’s your friend, John, and obviously needs you, so I propose you stay and help him. You don’t need me for this, and I don’t need you to take me home.” How about something like that – if Mary was to be presented as a strong, funny, confident, feminist hero (with flaws to make her more interesting)?
But I have come to the conclusion that many male writers just can’t fathom how biased they are by their own gender. They think they can write strong women, because they somewhat see them as strong men with tits and a bit more emotions. Sorry, that’s not how it works.
Same goes for all the violence applied to solve problems – all those shootings, explosions and killings. A very male kind of conflict resolution. Just because a woman shoots a man that doesn’t make her strong or feminist – it just makes her a killer.
Perhaps a female co-writer could have helped… but that’s unheard of at Sherlock.
Tag: writing
i have spent the last 50 minutes browsing through steven moffat, OBE’s shooting script of The Blam!! What?? Eh? Vow and my dudes my guys my lads i have read fanfic that was SO MUCH BETTER, and i don’t mean i’ve read a fanfic or two that were even better than this Mighty Original, i mean i have read hundreds and hundreds of fics that had better planning better research and better writing. i’m confident when i say this dude couldn’t write the beautiful love story we thought we were watching if he tried and everything would have gone to shit from the start if they hadn’t had amazing actors directors and a production team that made their bullshitting and gay jokes look beautiful and basically. if they hurt you, you are better than them. you are so much better and you are the future goodbye
Molly Hooper and Continuity vs Development
It’s not really a point of emotional investment to me, but it struck me that for all the fan criticism about Molly’s apparent lack of resolution in TFP, the fact is that the show never really showed her moving on. Note, I’m only interested in this from the perspective of characterization continuity; I have no personal interests at play with Molly or her infatuation. If pressed, I’d say I relate to the pining but don’t actually feel that she’s had enough character development for me to be invested. As Ivy wrote recently, there’s only so much you can expect from minor characters in a show focused on the main protagonist and his… significant other, and Molly’s definitely a minor character who did not have an arc. Then again, even John didn’t have an arc, as I’ve said. However, regardless of your *opinion* of Molly still not being over Sherlock, there was actually little enough reason to think she was. That is an example of reading into things and ‘confirmation bias’, much like the divergent interpretations of Mary after HLV, like I referred to earlier.
Basically, I think there’s a fundamental difference between character *continuity* and character *development*. Molly (and every other minor character) has had continuity without development, except (arguably) for Mary, who seems to have some development in TST without the benefit of retaining full character continuity. John and Sherlock are the only two characters on the show who *definitely* show both continuity and development. A lot of people mistake one for the other or assume they always go together. They do not. In fact, there’s also a third level of growth and that’s a development *arc*, which only Sherlock himself has had on the show.
To sum up, we had this set of ‘new and different’ responses from Molly in Series 3:
- Molly was quite willing to be Sherlock’s ‘John substitute’ in TEH, and even dressed and tried to take notes like him for Sherlock, but it didn’t really work out. When she realized it wasn’t working and Sherlock kept calling her John, she begged off from dinner and mentioned having a fiance.
- She’s still willing to help Sherlock no matter what, even when it comes to weirder and/or less romantic things than helping on cases, like helping with Sherlock’s Stag Night preparations for his best friend. This is a bit of a subjective thing, ‘cause I suppose helping Sherlock with John could be used as proof of a lack of jealousy. She made a face when she saw the Vitruvian Man page of Sherlock’s little John binder, so maybe she also realized he’s gay (but this doesn’t mean she’d now have to get over him, ’cause that’s just a different reason for him to be unavailable as always). Still, Molly had never previously implied Sherlock was gay or into John romantically. Sure, she said he looks ‘sad’ when John can’t see him, but that’s not necessarily romantic. Anyway, no reason to think she helped Sherlock with any small task for any different reasons than the ones established in ASiP, when she got him coffee.
Then we meet her fiance in TSoT, and he’s a Sherlock clone to the point of copying his coat and scarf. Still, he showed himself to be a bit of an idiot, and Molly stabbed him with a fork when he embarrassed her. In other words, she was apparently looking for a smart bloke who looked and dressed like Sherlock.
When we see Molly in HLV, she’s acting tough on Sherlock’s drug relapse and seems angry and disappointed enough to slap him. She definitely feels close to him in a way that’s not shown to be going both ways (that is, Sherlock cares but doesn’t interfere or offer opinions on her life). Molly’s shown taking Sherlock’s behavior personally and including herself and John as the ‘people who care about you’, though this approach clearly doesn’t work on Sherlock, who makes a sarcastic remark. Anyway, she’s certainly more feisty, but not thinking rationally about Sherlock or able to see him as he is, unlike the flash of insight she showed in TRF. If anything, you could say she’s as attached as ever but a bit more bitter or conflicted about it and/or about Sherlock in general, whom she’d clearly idealized. The implication is that she’s angry he’s not living up to her ideals.
Finally, we see Molly in TST, and she’s taking care of Rosie and clearly feeling awkward about delivering such bad news about John, and feeling sorry for Sherlock. She’s not really acting like a close friend, in the sense of trying to *help* Sherlock with his grief and pain somehow, but she’s clearly still emotionally invested and as awkward about it as ever. Then of course we have proof she’s not over her infatuation in TFP.
I realize there a lot of opinions and responses that people have to this, whether it’s happiness or disappointment, but my point is that the one thing it’s *not* is surprising. I also realize that people *were* surprised, but this is mostly due to projection or ‘real life behavior’ assumptions, which rarely apply (particularly on BBC Sherlock, which typically picks the more dramatic over the more realistic response). You may or may not think Molly ‘should have’ been over it by now, or maybe you think it’s great that she isn’t. Either way, I mostly don’t have an issue, although I probably disagree regardless. Essentially, there’s really no reason for characters to do the ‘healthy thing’ when people so often don’t, but on the other hand, there’s nothing cool or special or even romantic to me about endless pining for a person you’re idealizing and can never have *or* grow much closer to unless you stop pining. Regardless, it is what it is, and furthermore it is what it’s been since we were introduced to these characters, more or less.
OK, so that was my understanding of the text as it stands, but I just wanted to add that I understand @jedilock’s critique and comparison to Doctor Who (at least in broad strokes, ’cause I don’t watch Doctor Who). The feel-good ideal is certainly ‘very affirming’, as Sherlock would say. The woman who’d been pining– for the sake of that woman– should grow as a person and realize her own worth, and (essentially) move on with her life. That would be best. Fixating on someone who cannot give you what you want definitely isn’t romantic, admirable or satisfying to watch (except for either people who project onto the character and insert their own happy ending, or people who just… like angst). However, I can excuse and/or dismiss the argument if it’s made on those grounds *alone*. I’m not particularly interested in fiction portraying the healthy and/or best case scenario, nor do I have a problem with all minor characters being fodder for Sherlock’s growth, as Ivy described. Except those aren’t the only grounds for critique by far.
One, there’s the issue that while it’s fine that Molly’s not really that important to the narrative and doesn’t need an arc, her continued fixation is simply… hard for many viewers to swallow because it doesn’t ring true. Even if a character doesn’t get an arc, their responses *do* have to change and develop with time to some degree, and we *have* seen some movement in Series 3 (even if my original post clearly shows that it’s easy to overstate the nature and the degree of Molly’s development). As I said, her motivations didn’t *change* in any fundamental way. However, she was not completely divorced from the effects of time, either. So it’s easy to feel that a real person (who is not a minor character created for a certain purpose) would not feel as Molly feels, not to the degree and *intensity* we see in TFP, most of which was there purely for the drama. That sort of forced drama is definitely a concern in terms of writing.
Two, there’s the use of a woman to further a man’s emotional growth and give him cathartic suffering, to the detriment of that female herself, which is definitely problematic. This has been a theme with Molly, Irene and even Mary in BBC Sherlock, as @delurkingdetective has discussed. That is probably excusable with Molly or even the category of ‘minor characters’ in general, but definitely worth critiquing when it’s actually an example of a trend with the treatment of women specifically in Moffat’s writing.
The larger issue is primarily a certain laziness, a reliance on tropes and reusing old, comfortable characterizations. This isn’t to say that tropes are *bad*, really… but used carelessly, they may confuse the audience and mess up the characterization of the protagonist (which is presumably not what anyone wants). One example is obviously all the extensive usage of romantic tropes in Sherlock, which certainly helped give some of us the impression the show’s structure meant to follow through on those signals. Perhaps even *more* problematically, the writing reuses some of Sherlock’s *own* mistakes and blind spots for plot convenience in ways that don’t entirely make sense in context. It’s not just *Molly* who keeps making her old mistake, over and over again, in ways that aren’t fully believable. The bigger issue is something like Sherlock’s behavior with Norbury in TST, as @delurkingdetective described. To have Sherlock trust that Norbury won’t or couldn’t kill him after being in a similar situation with Mary, *and* going on to be super-predictive detective again in TLD might explain why *John* lost faith in him, but it could easily justify the *viewer* losing faith in the show, as well. He wasn’t emotionally compromised with Norbury the way he was with Mary, so there’s no real excuse for his arrogance overriding his ability to predict and understand murder and murderers except pure plot necessity.
In essence: Mary had to die. Molly had to be in love. Sherlock had to suffer. And that is simply not good enough writing.
Is “The Final Problem” Too Insane To Fix?
This is the question I am posing to myself at the moment.
I am working on “In The Details.” But honestly…it’s really hard to do anything with this mess. Chapter 3 just bogged down over the question of exactly when Eurus murdered “the therapist who really lives here” and how long that body’s been “in a sack in the airing cupboard.” Because Eurus has apparently been John’s therapist for a while. If she killed the actual therapist in order to take over her life, let’s say, right before her first session with John…then by the time Sherlock shows up to the house in “The Lying Detective,” that body should be getting pretty ripe. Especially given that it’s in an airing cupboard, which I have just learned is either a heated closet used for drying sheets and towels, or a closet used to house the central heating/cooling system. Which means it would be warm. Which means the body’s decay would be accelerated, AND (in the case of the second definition of ‘airing cupboard’) the stink would be spread all over the house by the air ducts. And yet nobody in that house notices the smell of decay, despite the fact that John, Sherlock, and Molly are all quite familiar with it.
How does one explain this? Special super-powerful stench-of-death-masking potpourri? Adenoid-neutralizing forcefields? What?
Also…does this therapist have any other patients? Didn’t they notice when their therapist was replaced by Eurus Holmes?
Never mind. I will think of something, I’m sure, when I’m less pissed off.
It doesn’t matter how much you’ve mapped the territory of TFP, there’s always another plot hole to stumble into.
It is a plot black hole.
Just as I thought I read and at least put some thought into all the plot holes, theres ALWAYS something new.
Well, some people who have no problem with S4 would probably say that Churros compelled all the other patients with her magic powers I guess.
I don’t get right now why she must have been Johns therapist for a while, because with the given scene it’s this:
Monday: John decided to search for new therapist
Tuesday: in the afternoon: Chose Churros
Wednesday: in the morning: made the appointment
Thursday:
Friday: the day the scene takes place and the day of the appointmentThat means if Churros new she had to take the therapists place, she would have to do it at least on Friday morning. That would mean one day of corpse in the airing cupboard.
BUT now it get’s fucky for me. I assume at this point that therapists must have a picture of themselves on their website, we see that with the one male therapists shown in the scene, he has a video online.
Now if there would be a picture of the real therapists then surely John would notice that upon the first look he get’s at his new therapist aka Churros. That would mean she had to take over her life somewhere around Monday which leaves us with 5 days of that corpse hanging in the airing cupboard.
BUT Sherlock must have done the same thing, at least two weeks ago, now assuming that Churros was even better at predicting everyones actions she would have to take the therapists life at least two weeks ago, right. So corpse hanging there for 14 days. nice.Either way, that corpse is hanging there for 5 or 14 days and it must be reeking all over the house.
So am I having a massive brain fart or is this indeed fucky? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
It’s even…fuckier?…than you point out, because at least according to Eurus, the dead therapist is STILL in the airing cupboard at John’s final session. That’s when she says, “she’s in a sack in the airing cupboard.” John’s final session has to be at least a week after the one we see at the beginning of the episode (and possibly longer, given that enough time has passed for things to get ‘back to normal’ for everyone). So you take your 5 to 14 days and add, at a minimum, 7. That’s up to 21 days that corpse has been in the cupboard, and John is just sitting there blithely talking about how much happier he is, with nary a curious sniff.
I mean I am resigned to the fact that as written, this episode makes no fucking sense. But it’s pretty bad when you can’t even get your fix-it of it to make sense.
I suppose that the therapist could be alive in the sack in the airing cupboard. That would explain away the lack of smell, and Eurus could be periodically pumping her for information to keep the ruse going. Like, I don’t know, “How many appointments do I need to cancel today? How do I get your mom to stop texting me? Where do you keep the extra napkins?” Your basic impersonating a therapist logistics.
Oh my God, what a horrible thought.
I mean it’s brilliant actually if I use it I’ll credit you, but…EURGH. That poor therapist.
That poor therapist indeed. She’ll definitely need therapy after this.
(I’m a terrible person.)
Genre Theory And Implicit Contracts
This is a very interesting article by Henry Jenkins on “Genre Theory and Implicit Contracts,” making use of Alec Austin’s “Implicit Contracts”… namely author/reader contracts. There are several points in there which I thought particularly intriguing and fitting for a discussion on Sherlock.
The idea of the implicit contract between author and reader is basically as this one…
The typical exchange involved in entertainment media might be modeled thusly:
The Audience offers the Provider
– Their time
– Their attention
– And sometimes (e.g. movies, cable TV) their money.
The Provider offers the Audience
– Entertainment
– And the delivery structure they expect.
Whenever an entertainment provider violates the implicit contract
created by the audience’s expectations (through intrusive advertising or
clumsy product placement, for example), they risk alienating their
audience.There is the exchange of goods. If it is the blatant money/entertainment or something deeper doesn’t matter. The point is: both must give something, and the relationship is rendered contractual because of the involvement of the exchange of goods. If it weren’t an exchange of goods depending on circumstances, it’d be either a gift or theft.
To further detail theories about author/reader contracts specifically in the media environment, legal theory is employed with the conclusion that
The contract implied in fact, in which “the parties have entered into no
formal agreement but comport themselves in relation to one another in
was that could only be explained by the existence of the requisite
contractual intentions” is a much better model for understanding the
relationship: Audience members would not waste their time or attention
on an entertainment product unless it had been presented in a way that
suggested it would entertain them. While such contracts have no legal
force, the perception that their terms have been violated will typically
cause both social and economic consequences.Of course the problem is that
here, “each audience member’s subjective experience of the entertainment will
determine whether they feel the contract’s terms have been fulfilled or
not”; yet even the very “formalism of law itself is a discursive construct based on the
fiction that contextual knowledge is not required to interpret the
“unambiguous” terms of a contract.” Furthermore,Creators and producers who are concerned about the risk of triggering
such an audience backlash over a perceived violation of the implicit
contract should be aware that marketing and creative choices can do a
great deal to shape both a property’s audience and the terms on which it
will be received.Sounds familiar?
Of course the finer details of reader interpretation and reception are without definite influence on part of the producer, but as mentioned, marketing and creative choices impact the manner of reception drastically. Further, if we include Umberto Eco’s writings, the picture is complete: a text has a transparent intention that was authorially written into the text. You can’t interpret something in a text that the textual framework does not offer you. Plus, knowledge of the producers’ (other) works will likewise impact your expectations of the follow-up product.
All those Chekov’s guns Mofftiss use in Sherlock? Violations of the contract. As was discussed in this amazing thread here, likewise the inclusion of huge emotional moments for the characters in a show whose plot is driven by character and relationship development become Chekov’s guns. The producer markets the product in such a way as will impact reception and then proceeds to produce and offer the product in such a way that builds towards a fulfillment of the conflicts showcased in the marketing,…
only not to deliver? Mate, that is a violation of the contract in the most basic and fucked up form ever. What story are you writing, if not this? How is the repeated inclusion of huge moments that forever go unresolved a mark of genius or good writing? Because I don’t see it. I see it, more generally, not just as queerbaiting but authorial baiting of readers to the worst. Yes, of course this gives you as reader a lot of space to explore the product in your fan works.
But readers shouldn’t have to be doing ALL the work that the author’s product refuses to do.
But you know, I suppose we should have seen it coming. TGG’s resolution in ASiB as a phone call could have been an amusing one-time thing. But then we got TRF handled like this in TEH…. and the pattern begins, and it unfolds to an incredibly daring, yet ultimately disappointing level throughout S3.
The work Sherlock needs to do… man, the pile is so huge it will fall on all our heads. Rest assured that at some point your audience will feel quite alienated and will follow up on that alienation.
You can only continue this trend for so long.
idk who might be interested in this. maybe @byebyefrost @myspecialhell @isitandwonder?
Thank you @wssh-watson for substantiating this discussion.
“But readers shouldn’t have to be doing ALL the work that the author’s product refuses to do.”
Yes! We shouldn’t be left to speculate that it was all a dream from S3 onwards, that there will be a fourth episode, that it was all fake and the real S4 will somehow step forward.
How badly did you fuck up if your fans retreat to those excuses to still be able to love something that became very important in their lifes?!
It’s nice to be intrigued to speculate, butit’s awful if you are forced to do so to keep our sanity.
And they knew this would happen. They even talked about calling TFP “Backlash”. Remember what Gatiss said in the 4 minute special shown at the TAB screenings in the US in December? That they were not sure if the audience would like where they were going with the show and that they needed the fans support to continue (I’m paraphrasing). Well, innocent, happy times, when we speculated that would mean Johnlock becoming canon. Who’d thought we’d get killer sister Eurus on Shutter Island and desexualised Parentlock with a Mary voiceover?!
We thougth they were clever, we believed in them, we thougt all the flaws would lead up to some grant reveal, emotional growth, exposing an intricate plan from the beginning.
Nope.
Did they really think that we would be so blown away by the silly plot and brutal effects of TFP that we wouldn’t mind the large plot holes? Did they really think we would be so loyal as to stay with them until sometime in the unforseeable future S5 will appear, after they repeatedly insulted our perception and intelligence? Because we are so in love with their leads that the story doesn’t matter as long as Ben has nice curls and John… I don’t even know what happened to John in S4…
And why, pray tell, promoting the story like this: Who is Sherlock in love with?… I rememver writing after the I love you trailer that Mofftiss are not monsters, that they wouldn’t put something this promising into the trailer without delivering something along the line of Johnlock. Little did I know…
They saw it coming but still upped the ante. They were playing their game – and they lost it.
And thinking about what they did with S4 and especially with TFP – with eyes wide open as it seemed – I’m not that excited for the possibility of an S5.
Yes, absolutely. It’s so ridiculous–we all know how this is supposed to go because we know stories and this is gaslighting on a HUGE level: reality didn’t happen as you saw it; your perception of reality and your ability to read and evaluate things are consequently severely flawed.
Um, no. It isn’t. You just didn’t deliver and are now trying to hide that very obvious fact.
I think attempts at retconning s4 into something more positive is okay. Trying to save the narrative is okay. But it’s equally important to acknowledge the failure, because otherwise you’re just naively parroting the blind faith we had before that left us so completely stunted in the end… I also think that trying to downplay logical inconsistencies and plot holes shouldn’t be done. If you can’t guarantee narrative consistency, what part of your story am i supposed to buy, and like, and support?
There are about over a hundred texts like the one by Alec Austin out there. Literary theory is so fruitful for such a discussion. But despite this common consensus and logical conclusion, we’re still supposed to stop expressing our views and demanding better–why? Because most of us are women?
Right, forgot you could do that to a bunch of hysterical hormone driven women when the man is in a position of power. My bad.
I won’t let this go for a while.
Tbh it’s quite clear the writers didn’t really know what they were doing. They remind me of the first times I experimented with cooking with spices. I kept adding this and that, just for the thrill of it, and sometimes the meal was delicious… but others it was inedible.
I’ll tell you a secret: the last act makes a film.
Wow them in the end, and you got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you’ve got a hit.
Find an ending, but don’t cheat, and don’t you dare bring in a deus ex machina.
Your characters must change, and the change must come from them.
Do that, and you’ll be fine.
Screenwriting expert Robert McKee’s character in Adaptation [x] (via skulls-and-tea)
That was a lonely night on TVTropes.org
“Is she talking about herself, or Moftiss?” Well, both. It’s like they made a list of TV tropes and then deliberately fucked around with them. Remember, kids, tropes are not inherently bad, unless you misuse them. I’d say leaning on a trope while putting a literal call-out on-screen is at least skirting the line. Take a look:
Lampshade Hanging:
“Calling attention to [something that] threatens the audience’s willing suspension
of disbelief, [then] moving on”. A classic example is Mycroft saying “How
is any of this possible?” to Eurus when she starts her games in TFP. But
remember lamp hell? The fucky one is how the lamps in 221B are on and
off apparently at random throughout S4 – including as the boys are about
to ride an explosion out the window and survive unscathed – and how many of the objects in the flat remain mysteriously unscathed, too.Chekhov’s Gun: Yes, we know. There are entire lists of unresolved Chekhov’s thingy-or-other. The fucky one? The literal rifle on the wall in the TFP Three Garridebs scene.
Wing Pull: Faced with an impossible final boss situation, a character is suddenly revealed to be able to fly. Or, in the case of Sherlock, to land. We saw it first when the Moriarty video rescued Sherlock from his suicide mission in HLV, and the plane turned around. The fucky one? Sherlock hugs Eurus and she agrees to land her mental plane of terror and stop torturing everyone.
The Butler Did It: “The most unlikely suspect… turns out to be guilty because the author
wasn’t creative enough to come up with a better way to surprise the
reader”. We saw this with the reveal of Jim from IT (and believe me, IT techs are absolutely treated as a contemporary equivalent of butlers) as Moriarty in The Great Game. The fucky one? Vivian Norbury the receptionist (another contemporary replacement for traditional service positions) is suddenly revealed to be double-dealing half of MI6 and responsible for all of Mary’s (final) problems.Deus ex Machina: “When some new event, character, ability, or object solves a seemingly unsolvable problem in a sudden, unexpected way”. Moriarty’s phone ringing in ASiB to save the day
was perhaps the first big clue that our writers possess a God Machine.
They did it again when they used fancy technology to retcon Sherlock’s murder of Magnussen. The fuckiest one in S4? The little recording device – yet another literal machine – hidden in John’s cane, which he leaves behind for Sherlock in an extremely difficult emotional decision which Sherlock nonetheless predicts weeks ahead of time, thus allowing him to outsmart Culverton.Diabolus ex Machina: “The introduction of an unexpected new event, character, ability, or
object designed to ensure that things suddenly get much worse for the
protagonists.“ We found out the writers have a Devil Machine, too, when they granted Moran impeccable timing and Magnussen a Disney-worthy Mind Palace. The fucky one in S4 is everyone’s favorite Sister Edgelord, Eurus Holmes, who was never adequately foreshadowed yet suddenly appears with a bevy of automated audio-visual terror puzzles to derail the long-term narrative arcs and traumatize not only our heroes, but the fans as well.Jumping the Shark:
When an established series changes significantly in an attempt to stay
fresh. Some people thought this happened in TEH, others in TSoT, HLV,
TAB, T6T, or not until TFP. Reasons cited included, among other things,
Lazarus, Mary as a significant character, the wedding, Mary as an
assassin, “it was all a dream”, Mary as the main character, and Eurus.
The fucky one? Mary jumps the gun – a very short arc in both space-time
and character redemption – while literally surrounded by sharks.
So has BBC Sherlock jumped the shark this season? Depends where it lands, I guess.
[PSA: Don’t click the links. Seriously, if you value your time, never set foot in the evil mindfuck maze that is TVTropes.org. Vatican Cameos.]
Mark: we don’t analyse our narrative and we don’t care about the reactions that certain twists will provoke
Me: isn’t that… just being… a bad writer?
Literary Device: Chekhov’s Gun
Chekhov’s gun is one of my favorite literary devices. This literary device is when the author introduces an object (it can be anything though, like a character or a phrase) that seems invaluable, but later becomes important to the story. Basically: introduce the gun in the first act, fire in the second.
When using Chekhov’s gun, you can do a few things. The first is using it as a red herring. A red herring is a clue that throws the reader off track or a false clue. This is often used in mysteries. Using Chekhov’s gun as a red herring is exactly that: introduce a seemingly pointless object, but hint it might have some significance. However, this has to be executed extremely well to work. If it’s not, your attempt will be seen as useless and an editor will delete it. The reader has to truly believe the object has some sort of significance for this device to work. Never introduce something and then never mention it again.
Or the object could be both Chekhov’s gun and a red herring. Two objects may be introduced and one may carry out as the object readers will see as important and significant. However, the second object, forgotten and completely insignificant, can make a quick comeback. The first object would be the red herring, the second object would be Chekhov’s gun, and putting them together would be a plot twist.
The second way to use Chekhov’s gun is the old fashion way of introducing an object and not explaining its significance until later. JK Rowling did this in The Order of the Phoenix when Harry and the others were cleaning out Grimmauld Place. They found a locket that no one could open and then tossed it to the side. That was one of Voldemort’s horcruxes, but no one knew it until the next book.
Chekhov’s gun is similar to foreshadowing, but not the same. Using an object to foreshadow an event and then using that object in the event is Chekhov’s gun. using Harry Potter as an example again, Dumbledore’s warning to stay away from a part of the third floor is foreshadowing because its significance was heavily implied.
Depending on who you talk to, the guidelines for Chekhov’s gun will vary. Some believe it is synonymous with foreshadowing while others do not.
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